"Perhaps you have no wife to make your home comfortable?"
"Have't I though; the best that ever drew the breath of life," cried Corney, with a loving remembrance of Mary.
"Poor fellow," continued the voice; "your situation is deplorable, it appears. You have a good trade, an excellent wife, a comfortable home, and yet you are discontented."
Corney felt himself resolving into a leaden pellet.
"One question more," said the voice; "when did you first feel dissatisfied?"
"Why, to tell the truth, yer honor, as soon as that fellow, Phil Blake, began to build his big brick house opposite to my little mud cabin. Before that, I was as gay as a lark, but it stood like a great cloud between me and the sun."
"Envy was the cloud, envy, that gloomiest of all earthly passions. Why do you covet this man's fortune?"
"Because, sir, he always looks so smilin', and jinks his money about, an' dispises the poor boys he used to be friendly with."
"Foolish, foolish soul!" said the voice, in accents of commiseration, "but not yet wholly tainted. Thy love of home hath partially redeemed thee. Listen to me. Dost thou see yonder piled up mass of rainbow-tinted clouds. Do they not look gloriously, as the rising sun flings his beams through them, as though revelling in their embrace? Wouldst thou not like to behold such magnificence closer?"
"Nothing in life betther, yer majesty," said Corney.